This blog will follow my trials and tribulations playing live mid stakes Texas Hold'Em throughout California.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

There's a Straight on Board!

Today was one of those days that started of fantastically well, with me happy to be alive and feeling just wonderful, and ended with me once again questioning what the fuck I'm doing. I woke up feeling refreshed and alert for once and promptly logged into FullTilt and found...well, basically it looked like this. Just action everywhere, all kinds of idiots in the 3/6 games, just freaking amazing. So I even decided to game start a full ring 2/4 because what the hell that's how you get better and everyone says I should do it so I've been doing it and I basically just get to OBLITERATE this guy (who was admittedly terrible) for like 60 hands. Apparently DougL actually was watching the match and later berated me for not having Skype open, which I will admit was a serious mistake on my part. So anyway, I played for an hour or more and despite making 1.7 pears per hand against that poor human was still somehow getting crushed, then eventually made like 3 full houses at the same time with AK (or something like that...it was really quite amazing) and called it a morning. Then I went to work out and lifted weights for the first time in a week and in general just felt awesome. Cue live poker.

Things are going alright, but the game is kind of crappy and I'm just sort of treading water. I win my post-in hand and another right away and am quickly up a rack. I order fruit, a bagel, and coffee for breakfast which does more for my self confidence. I listen to good music and everything is correct in the world and there's not a worry in my mind. Then I proceed to bleed off five racks of chips over the next 7 hours, taking all manner of preposterous beats, most of which aren't even worth discussing. Except for one.....

So there are two guys in my game who are just gambling it up, having a grand old time, becoming very friendly with each other really for no reason other than they are both young and white and retarded. In theory I should be friends with them also, but they are complete idiots and have no clue what they're doing so what am I going to do exactly there? Anyway, if you've played live poker you have a good sense of what's going on; the game has turned into a social event, with people laughing and having a good time, taking jabs at each other, just exactly what a poker game is supposed to be. And everyone is having a good time because I am personally losing about $10/minute at this point, ensuring that basically nobody else, other than the partier in seat 4, is stuck. He is playing all sorts of silly hands declaring it's his only way out, etc, etc, and his new buddy in seat 5 is playing along, 3 betting him mercilessly and the like. So like I said I'm just getting fucking destroyed, and the game has crossed over from "fun and gambly" to "out of control". Everyone is playing almost every hand for as many bets as requested (which is often 2 or 3) and all semblance of order and discipline has gone out the window. Then it happens. Seat 5 opens and seat 8 cold calls the button. I am in seat 1 and defends K8ss (I did successfully call seat 5 down with king high once today, but this was not to be the outcome of our fateful hand). The flop comes:

854ddh

And we proceed directly to batshit. I check, he bets, the button (who's a terrible fish) raises, I 3 bet and he immediately caps. The button calls and I call cause I mean....I know it's difficult to put them both on diamond draws, but you're gonna have to pry this one out of my cold dead hands. To the turn, which is a beaut:

854ddh-7h

I check, seat 5 bets, the button calls, and I tank to make sure I don't want to raise before calling. To the river:

854ddh-7h-6s

LOL OK not what I expected but whatever. I check...huge mistake. They both turbo check behind me and I table my hand instantly like it's the nuts (always do this when there is a straight on board and you're first to act if you have anything at all they could construe as a hand that beats theres) and it happens...seat 5 tanks. He looks at the board, he looks at his hand....the board...his hand....and then seat 4 says under his breath quietly seemingly so only seat 5 could here but seriously I'm not deaf "straight on board...there's a straight on board straight on board" and yet somehow seat 5 isn't hearing him (and later claims to have never heard him but bullshit I say bullshit) and eventually (after the dealer admonishes seat 4 that he's not supposed to say anything...twice) some light goes on inside that vacuous dome of a head of his and he turns over...JTdd. LOL fuck, OK fine. But wait....here's the best part. Seat 8 mucks! After all that, seat 8 is actually clueless enough to muck his hand!

I am beside myself and call the floor man over because I don't know what else to do....I don't really have an argument beyond "that guy is an asshole" but make it anyway, and the floor man agrees with me that he is in fact an asshole but can't really do anything about it. So I stack up my half of the pot and then it hits me....if seat 8 mucked...I was winning the whole pot before the river. After 4000 hours of live poker it's hard to believe you still see new depths of stupidity....but I mean, it's LA.